"It's That SPAM Again!"

It's happening again. It's always happening, but lately my inboxes have been filled with them as if the spammers in all of us have been awakened. What's that, you don't spam? Never! You may be an indentured spammer but don't know it! Trying to pass along a boycott of gasoline to bring prices down? Or you think that 3 die-hard competitors made an announcement on the news that you can make money forwarding emails? So you pass along these chain letters because it's hard to resist the part of you that wonders if it's true. I think we've all been there.

As people in an industry of service, we want to help people...clients...or potential clients. So we forward these emails to our entire address book, because we think, "hey, who wouldn't want to know what they can do to help lower gas prices ", right? What ends up happening is that you just gave yourself your own bad press. You did not investigate the truth of the claim on any of the popular email hoax verification websites, you just forwarded it along. And, if you didn't BCC (blind carbon copy) everyone, then your entire address book is now being forwarded to millions of others who continue to pass the message along.

What's the harm, really? Well, aside from clogging email servers with these messages, and increasing the cost of managing email, you increase the risk to your computer, and the computers of others. The risk becomes a little more clear when we realize that the majority of these emails originate from spammers trying to get the message around and back to them enough that they will be able to gather some good email addresses to which they can send their junk email. Each time you hit that forward button, you are helping them win and clogging your own inbox! This is why using the BCC option is important whenever you send any email. Protect your family, friends, colleagues, and clients from more SPAM by simply deleting the email. As a courtesy, you may first want to reply to the person who sent it to you and refer them to an email hoax verification website such as Snopes.com (which is where we found the popular "gas out " email used in our example today). Other risks include the ability for people to begin attaching viruses to the emails. So, your "virus warning " could become a virus email itself. Think about that scenario... "my real estate agent sent me an email that crashed my entire system... ". You don't want to be that agent!

So, how can you be sure an email is a hoax? The first step is to be on the lookout for these characteristics:

• The email says, "This is not a chain letter " or "This is not a hoax "
• The email says to send it to "everyone you know " or to "as many people as possible "
• The email contains technical sounding language to sound more credible
• The author of the email identifies him/herself as a leader of a foreign country or part of the leader's family or staff
• The author of the email claims that the original email was sent to them by someone who works for the company involved or is a lawyer or doctor or some professional who supposedly "backs " whatever is said in the email

The easiest way to check on a hoax if you are unsure is to visit a site like Snopes.com and search for the subject matter of the email. For example, we found the gas out email by searching for "gas prices " in the Snopes.com search engine. Another great site is Symantec.com where you can see a list of hoaxes collected by email subject line.

So, the next time you get an email promising $800 from Microsoft for forwarding an email, think twice and use the delete button instead of the forward button. The people in your address book will be happy you did!

You're welcome to forward this email to others for educational purposes...but alas, there will be no special reward for forwarding this to as many people as you can in the next 10 minutes. ;)

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